Wednesday, April 5, 2017

Lane splitting becomes legal in
California on New Year’s Day. It has been tolerated as “lane sharing”
since the first Los Angeles freeway opened in 1940 but it has never been
explicitly legal before. California is the first and only state to
sanction the common sense practice of riding a motorcycle between lanes
of stalled or stopped automobiles and trucks.

Outside California, at least in America,
most politicians and most non-riding motorists still think lane
splitting is more dangerous than sitting in traffic. The rest of the
country is wrong.

In 2014 a two year study of motorcycle
accidents on both freeways and surface streets commissioned by the
California Office of Traffic Safety and the University of California at
Berkeley found that every California rider who rides a lot splits lanes
and that lane splitting does not increase the likelihood of a motorcycle
accident but actually lowers the chance that a motorcyclist in traffic
will be struck from behind.

CHP

The California Highway Patrol, which now
has about 450 motorcycle officers – 120 of them ride Harleys – has
always understood what was and wasn’t safe on a motorcycle and tried to
legalize lane splitting in 2012. The CHP issued a set of “Lane Splitting
General Guidelines.” The guidelines assured bikers they would not be
ticketed if they did not split at more than 10 miles an hour faster than
other traffic, did not split going faster than 40 miles per hour, only
split in the far left lanes and used “reasonable care.”

That would have settled the issue except
that a busybody named Kenneth Mandler objected that the CHP had
published an “underground regulation.” So, the state police took down
its list of “guidelines for safe lane splitting” and the task of
defining legal versus illegal lane splitting went back to the California
legislature.

The original bill authorizing lane
splitting in California forbid the practice when going more than 50
miles per hour or more than 15 mph faster than traffic. Some
motorcyclists objected so the bill was reworked . Both houses of the
California legislature passed the bill written by Assemblymen Bill Quirk
last August 4 and Governor Jerry Brown signed it two weeks later.

The bill got around the specifics of
exactly what would and would not be tolerated by inserting language that
would require interested parties including the CHP to work out the
details. Those details will probably look a lot like the 2012 CHP
guidelines.

New Law

The new law reads:

“Existing law requires, whenever a
roadway has been divided into two or more clearly marked lanes for
traffic in one direction, that a vehicle be driven as nearly as
practical entirely within a single lane and not be moved from the lane
until the movement can be made with reasonable safety.”

“This bill would define ‘lane splitting’
as driving a motorcycle, that has two wheels in contact with the
ground, between rows of stopped or moving vehicles in the same lane, as
specified. The bill would authorize the Department of the California
Highway Patrol to develop educational guidelines relating to lane
splitting in a manner that would ensure the safety of the motorcyclist,
drivers, and passengers, as specified. The bill would require the
department, in developing these guidelines, to consult with specified
agencies and organizations with an interest in road safety and
motorcyclist behavior.”

“The Department of the California
Highway Patrol may develop educational guidelines relating to lane
splitting in a manner that would ensure the safety of the motorcyclist
and the drivers and passengers of the surrounding vehicles. In
developing guidelines pursuant to this section, the department shall
consult with agencies and organizations with an interest in road safety
and motorcyclist behavior, including, but not limited to, all of the
following: The Department of Motor Vehicles; The Department of
Transportation; The Office of Traffic Safety;” and “A motorcycle
organization focused on motorcyclist safety.”